'Fetal heartbeat' bill clears Louisiana House, Senate committees

Abortion rights advocates poured fake blood on the floors of Memorial Hall at the Louisiana state capitol Wednesday in protest of the "fetal heartbeat" bill that advanced out of House and Senate committees. The protests led to several arrests.(Photo: Hunter Lovell/LSU Manship School News Service)

“I think this committee is going to overwhelmingly support this legislation because we believe in the right to life.”

Rep. Dustin Miller, D-Opelousas

Louisiana would follow several states who have already authorized similar bans. In addition to Alabama, legislatures in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia and Florida have introduced bills to implement six-week abortion bans.

Critics of the bill raised concerns that it would be too restrictive. Amy Irvin, executive director of New Orleans Abortion Funds, a pro-choice group, said the bill would ban abortions before most women would even know they are pregnant. That is usually around six to eight weeks.

“This abortion ban would rob Louisianians of the most personal decision, which is whether, when and how to become a parent,” said Michelle Erenberg, executive director of Lift Louisiana, a women’s health organization. “This is an intimate choice with no place for politicians.”

A House committee advanced a bill Wednesday by Sen. John Milkovich, D-Shreveport, to further limit abortions.(Photo: Justin DiCharia/LSU Manship School News Service)

Other abortion bills move through Legislature

Milkovich’s bill moves to the House floor for what is expected to be the final legislative approval before it heads to the governor’s desk.

The Senate Health and Welfare Committee also advanced bills Wednesday to restrict access to abortion by expanding requirements for outpatient abortion facilities to retain medical records and by modifying regulations to limit access to drug-induced abortions.

One of the bills, sponsored by House Health and Welfare Committee Chair Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe, would change the regulations on outpatient abortion facilities to include chemical abortions.

“This is a very simple pro-life bill,” Hoffman said, explaining that licensing for regulation in outpatient abortion facilities includes surgical abortions only. “But chemical abortions are also abortions, and they are increasing,” he said.

Dorinda Bordlee, vice president and senior counsel of Bioethics Defense Fund, said the bill would not apply to the morning-after and other birth control pills.

Schilling argued that the purpose of the bill is “to drastically reduce the number of places where it is legal to obtain an abortion,” forcing women to travel to one of the three locations in Louisiana that provide abortions.

Also in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City, presented the bill to expand the rules for abortion facilities to retain medical records of women who received abortions there.

The bill also would extend such requirements from physicians and medical directors to owners of abortion facilities.